Animating in flash

Adobe is not exaggerating when it says that Flash CS4 Professional is the
“industry-leading authoring environment for creating engaging interactive
experiences.” You only need to visit a few sites that use Flash to understand
how compelling it is. Using graphics, animation, sound, and interactivity,
Flash can excite, teach, entertain, and provide practical information.

I can remember the day as clear is if it were just yesterday. I was walking by my boss’ office
late one winter afternoon at the college where I teach, and he called me into his office.
Sitting on his desk was a thin white box with some sort of weird swirl on it. He slid the box
across to me and asked, “You know anything about Flash?”

GettinG Started
Adobe Flash Professional CS5 provides a comprehensive authoring environment for creating digital animation and interactive Web sites. Flash is widely used to create engaging applications rich in video, sound, graphics, and animation. You can create content in Flash or import it from other Adobe applications such as Photoshop or Illustrator, quickly design simple animations, and use Adobe ActionScript 3.0 to develop sophisticated interactive projects. But Adobe Flash Professional is just one product among a suite of Flash CS5 tools.

THE TECHNIQUES described in this book assume you have a reasonable working knowledge of Flash. In later chapters, we’ll discuss ways of working that involve symbols, timelines and various animation techniques.
This first chapter will serve as a refresher course on the fundamentals of designing for animation and introduce a few cool drawing techniques along the way.

Creating the animation in a movie clip symbol
Your button symbols in this interactive restaurant guide already contain a movie clip symbol of a gray information box in their Over states. You will edit each movie clip symbol to add an animation inside it. 1 In the Library panel, expand the restaurant previews folder. Double-click the movie clip symbol icon for gabel loffel over info. Flash puts you in symbol-editing mode for the movie clip symbol called gabel loffel over info.
2 Select all the visual elements on the Stage (Ctrl/Command+A).

The movie clip contains motion tweens of several photographs fading in and out. A movie clip’s animation is independent of the main Timeline and plays only when you test the movie (Control Test Movie in Flash Professional). 4 In the Library panel, drag the contact movie clip symbol from the Library panel to the Stage. Position the contact movie clip instance at X=620 and Y=175.
The movie clip of the real estate agent and her contact information is a simple static graphic.

Symbols are reusable assets that are stored in your Library panel. The movie clip, graphic, and button symbols are three types of symbols that you will be creating and using often for special effects, animation, and interactivity.
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getting Started
Start by viewing the final project to see what you’ll be creating as you learn to work with symbols. 1 Double-click the 03End.swf file in the Lesson03/03End folder to view the final project in Flash.
The project is a static illustration of a cartoon frame.

In this function, which is executed when the user clicks the Loader object, the Loader object is removed from the Stage, and then the playhead of each movie clip on the Stage moves to the first frame and begins playing. 3 Choose Control Test Movie in Flash Professional to preview the movie. Click on any of the four sections, and then click on the loaded content to return to the main movie. When you return to the main movie, all four movie clips play their nested animations.
Creating Masks
Masking is a way of selectively hiding and displaying content on...

You can easily create complex motion with articulations—joints between linked objects—with the feature called inverse kinematics. You can also morph—create organic changes in shapes—with shape tweens.
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getting Started
You’ll start the lesson by viewing the animated crane and floating buoy that you’ll create as you learn about articulated motion and morphing in Flash. You’ll also be animating a tentacle of an octopus. 1 Double-click the 05End.swf file in the Lesson05/05End folder to play the animation. Double-click the 05ShapeIK_End.

Over the last decade, we have seen a phenomenal change in the way we interact with sites
online. Where the experience for the end user was once two-dimensional, there are now
endless possibilities a Flash designer can create to introduce users to a whole new world of
interaction with their animations, and ergo, their brands. Yet with all of these great new
abilities comes a responsibility to your company and your users to present the best experience
you can.

Ideal for web designers, this book introduces Flash Catalyst basics with detailed step-by-step instructions and screenshots that illustrate every part of the process. You’ll learn hands-on how to turn your static design or artwork into working user interfaces that can be implemented in Flash Builder or Adobe AIR.
Import files from Photoshop, Illustrator, or Fireworks
Convert your artwork into interactive components and apply specific actions
Create animated transitions between the web pages in your project
Test interactive components and transitions while you work...

﻿This book will help Flash animators and designers understand how After Effects
integrates with Flash. Now that Adobe owns both Flash and After Effects, the
two programs are becoming tightly interwoven together with every product
update. Flash provides a creative web tool for animation and interactivity.
After Effects provides an easy-to-use application for creating visual effects and
motion graphics. With the ever increasing presence of video on the Web, Flash
animators and designers are jumping on the bandwagon and integrating After
Effects into their projects.
...

4 Right-click/Ctrl-click on the car and choose Create Motion Tween.
Flash converts the current layer to a Tween layer so you can begin to animate the instance. 5 Move the red playhead to the end of the Timeline. 6 Choose the Selection tool. 7 Move the car down about 5 pixels.
Flash creates a smooth animation of the car moving down slightly.
Adobe fLAsh professionAL Cs5 CLAssroom in A book
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8 Click on the motion tween in the Timeline and open the Motion Editor. 9 Click the Plus icon on the Eases category and choose Random.
The Random preset ease...

Welcome to Flash CS4 All-in-One For Dummies. Our goal when writing
this book was to share our enthusiasm for Flash and, at the same
time, demystify the application. You can do so many things with Flash that
it becomes mind boggling. The minibooks in this reference are designed to
take the boggle out of your mind and show you how to use Flash to create
Web banners, animations, and other delights. We also delve into the topics
of ActionScript and Flash video.

The last keyframe in the motion tween remains at frame 60, but additional frames are added to frame 190.
moving keyframes
When you click on a motion tween on the Timeline, the entire span is selected. This allows you to move the entire motion tween forward or backward in time as a single unit. However, if you want to move particular keyframes within a motion tween to change the pacing of the animation, you have to select individual frames. Holding down the Ctrl (Windows)/Command (Mac) key will let you select single frames or a span of frames within a motion tween. 1...

8 Choose the Free Transform tool. 9 Drag the corner rotation control points to rotate the arm upward to the alien’s shoulder height.
A keyframe is inserted at the end of the motion tween. The left arm rotates smoothly from the resting position to the outstretched position. 10 Select the last frame in all the other layers and insert frames (F5) so that the head, body, and feet all remain on the Stage for the same amount of time as the moving arms.
11 Exit symbol-editing mode by clicking the Scene 1 button at the top-left of the Stage. Your animation of...

Foundation Silverlight 3 Animation- P1: Silverlight has really come a long way since I started using it. It’s kind of interesting to
look back a mere two years (roughly) and think about how the workflow has changed. Of even
more interest is the staggering speed at which new features are being added. In the time I’ve
been using Silverlight, it has grown from a somewhat limited toolset to an ever-more-impressive
technology that has really started to come into its own.